Quick Pitch: Likester is a searchable database of what gets Liked on Facebook.
Genius Idea: Showing trends among friends, locations, categories and the world.
Facebook invited the web onto its platform when it launched the Like button a little more than a year ago. The invitation has been largely accepted: As of August, more than 2.5 million websites have installed it.
In all of this Liking, there is buried a mass of data that would be valuable to brands. But it's still difficult for even one individual to keep track of what is popular among his or her friends, thanks to Facebook's habit of hiding repeats from newsfeeds.
Likester aims to solve the problem for both individuals and brands. Its consumer-facing website, which launched in late April, shows you what is most popular among your friends and among all Facebook users. You can also search for top-Liked sites in a specific location or for what a specific friend liked and see what Likers of a specific page were also inclined to give a thumbs up.
Facebook search engine Booshaka has long provided searchable “trending topics.” Booshaka recently launched a more competitive approach. It assigns points for comments, posts and Likes on a fan page, and shows users where they and their friends stand in the ranking of fans.
Brands can use Booshaka to install a similar leaderboard on their own pages -- a feature that is free for now but seems like a promising future revenue stream.
Likester doesn't have a revenue roadmap yet, but founder Kevin McCarthy says that he's interested in using the catalog of Likes to help e-commerce sites better understand how to leverage the Like button. For now, he's established what is possibly the only efficient way to find out what the most-Liked local business in your hometown is.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
